Hunting History - Finding Family

This post will go hand in hand with my last, 'Louis Barra in Saipan.'  I concentrated more on Lousi himself on that one, but this is my search to find the owner of the other photo, of a Phillip Rey.  I know only a few things; he woud have been in the same Army unit as Louis (my cousin) and Jerry Olivera's (owner of the photo) dad.  On the photo Mr Olivera scrawled Phillip Rey - KY Killed in (?)  We assumed he was killed in Saipan, but his name isn't on any of the records of KIA there, nor could Mr Olivera find his name on the Wall. I've taken to facebook for help searching, and today I'm doing some digging.  Just on the offchance I find something, this will kind of just chronicle the methods I use. I started with a search on the WWII KIA/WIA list and found nothing under army. I went to ancestry.com and searched, finding a Phillip Ray on a 1940 census, living in Detroit but being born in Kentucky 1922, in his Freshman year in high school living with parents Ga...

I may not have been blogging lately (I've been pretty busy with my business) but I have been working on my tree.  Recently a distant cousin from Kansas (who still spells his name Hiegert) contacted me and we spent weeks trying to connect our trees.  I have connected two other branches...not his yet, but it's there!!  Today, though, I'm going to talk a little about my Maternal side. I work really hard on the paternal side of my tree, because it's a challenge.  They're the immigrants, only being in the US for a few generations of several surnames.  But my maternal side, the Wellers, have been here for a very long time. Recently I've been watching the show "Who Do You Think You Are" on TLC, and last night's episode was mainly based on the Revolutionary War.  Which got me thinking, I have MANY Revolutionary War Veterans on the Weller side of the tree.  In fact, one was almost fresh off the boat....so we're going to look at some of them today.  ...